In 2020, a business I’d started 4 years earlier collapsed. There were highlights in those 4 years but my memory of that season can only recall one word - “struggle”.

In that 4 year period, my wife and I celebrated our 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th year wedding anniversaries, and my 3 kids had their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th birthdays.

In other words, precious years I’d never get back, that if I’m honest, I spent stressing about business instead of being emotionally available.

Then it all collapsed anyway.

I can still remember a weekday in November 2020, sitting in my empty office after I’d just laid everyone off, staring at a blank whiteboard.

My emotions were a strange mix of sadness, failure, and loss, but also hope.

I walked away from the failed business with $60k in cash that I could use to re-build a new business.

But this time, I wasn’t just rebuilding my business - I was rebuilding my life.

I decided that this time around, I’d design it instead of letting it design me.

Between November 2020 and January 2021, I got serious about building thoughtful “systems” across my entire life.

Fast forward to November 2021 and:

• My business was doing 6-figures in profit.

• I had NO full-time employees (just contractors and my Executive Assistant).

• I worked ~30 hours a week and was available for every kids activity, lunch with friends in the middle of the week and dates nights every Saturday.

• I had time to launch a successful podcast (15k downloads/month).

• I was the most content I’d ever been.

I had become a “Systems Driven Founder”.

What is a Systems Driven Founder?

A Systems Driven Founder is someone who approaches both their personal life and their business with intentionality and proactivity.

The “founder” bit is important, because as founders of our own businesses, we have the unique freedom to control our own time and finances. Why then do most of us feel trapped?

Because we don’t intentionally design our lives and work.

But a Systems Driven Founder does.

We actively seek to make our businesses and our personal lives run by themselves, with as little friction as possible.

We’re not trying to squeeze the juice out of every moment of the day - but instead we leave room for margin.

We believe that we can have it all - massive business growth while being present and emotionally available to our friends and family.

We do this by doubling-down on the work that give us energy and getting rid of the work that doesn’t - either by delegating, automating or making tasks easy to do ourselves.

The Mindset of a Systems Driven Founder

Before we dive into the practical aspects, let's explore the mindset that underpins this approach. A Systems Driven Founder is…

• Intentional and Calculating: Every decision, from how you start your day to how you structure your team, is made with purpose and foresight.

• Proactive, Not Reactive: Instead of constantly responding to crises, you're anticipating needs and planning ahead.

• Organized and Calm: With systems in place, you're able to maintain composure even when unexpected challenges arise.

• Prepared with Margin: You're not running on empty. Instead, you've built in reserves of time, energy, and resources to handle whatever comes your way.

• Growth-Oriented: You see every challenge as an opportunity to refine and improve your systems.

• Leverage-Focused: You're always looking for ways to multiply your efforts through technology, delegation, or smart processes.

Okay, but what is a “system”, practically?

Whether we realize it or not, we all have systems - for everything. But when they’re unintentional, we call them “habits”.

For example, each morning I get my kids ready for school. It’s chaos. Breakfast, looking for matching socks, making sure they brush their teeth, have their homework, snacks, water bottles, shoes… it’s crazy.

It’s crazy because my system is chaotic. I haven’t been intentional with it. They don’t put their clothes out the night before. We haven’t planned their breakfasts. We don’t have a place for their backpacks.

But when we start thinking of this as a “Getting Ready for School System” our mindset toward it shifts. Instead of it happening to us, we get to design how it looks.

And the most important question for things like this (that we HAVE to do, but hate) is, “what would this look like if it were easy?”

So what if instead of chaos, we did this…

✅ The Sunday before the week starts, we’d make a breakfast meal plan and make sure that all the groceries are ordered and stocked.

✅ The night before school each evening, the kids…
- Set out their clothes, socks, shoes and toothbrushes.
- Pack their backpacks with their homework, snacks and water bottles.

If this all happened? The morning would be a breeze. Thanks to a little intentionality and a simple system.

But this isn’t just applicable to home. It works for every area across your entire life and business.

How to build your “Personal Operating System”: Audit, Design/Document, Execute (ADE)

Now, let's break down the process I use to implement systems in every area of my life and business. I call it ADE: Audit, Design/Document, Execute.

1. Audit

The first step is to take a comprehensive inventory of your life and business. We want to identify all of our default processes - we’ll then redesign these processes into well thought-out systems.

The easiest way to do this is to think of all the “accounts” in your life. I think of “accounts” as areas of my life that I invest and withdraw from. I have 7:

1. God

2. Marriage

3. Kids/Family

4. Friends

5. Career/Business

6. Health

7. Finances

Next, I want to identify all the processes I execute in a regular week for each of these “accounts”. These process are basically groupings of habits, routines or responsibilities.

One easy way to discover what these are is to audit your time for a week and try to create 3 to 5 buckets for each of these categories. You don’t need to be exacting here.*

*Note: In a given year, you have hundreds of processes. But don’t stress - if you just hit the handful that are top of mind for you now, then implement more later, the impact will be massive.

Here are my processes:

1. God

   • Reading the bible each morning

   • Monday night small group

2. Marriage

   • Date night planning

   • Family calendar management

   • Bed-time routine (with spouse)

3. Kids/Family

   • Getting kids ready for school

   • Meal planning, ordering groceries and cooking meals

   • Getting kids ready for soccer practice

   • Taking and picking kids up from school

   • Family fun weekend actives

   • Weekend soccer games

4. Friends

   • Call/text check-ins and occasion gifts (birthdays)

   • Guys happy hour

5. Career/Business

   • Processing email

   • Managing calendar and meetings

   • Send 10 weekly cold out reach emails

   • Create and schedule LinkedIn posts

   • Compile the weekly company scorecard

   • Organize and categorize expenses, provide weekly budget updates, and prepare receipts.

   • Update CRM entries with recent interactions and set follow-up reminders for key clients or leads.

6. Health

   • Tracking macros and nutrition

   • Workout (planning and scheduling)

7. Finances

   • Reviewing weekly expenses and categorizing them by budget area

   • Paying bills and checking on auto-pay setups

   • Tracking monthly savings or investment contributions

2. Design/Document

Now for each of the processes above, you want to answer the question, “if this were easy, how would it look”?

Ultimately, making it easy may mean you delegate it away or even automate it. We’ll get to that.

But regardless, you first need to design and document the ideal process. This means building out a separate documented Personal Core Process for each of the processes you outlined above (explained below 😉).

Personal Core Processes

These Personal Core Process documents will be rough outlines of the process. Later, you’ll build multiple SOPs (if necessary) within each “Personal Core Process” document to detail your systems.

Here’s an example of what my “Personal Core Process” template looks like.

 Note: We’re building an entire FREE course called, “Building Your Personal Operating System” complete with Notion templates for all of this. It’s coming out November 18. If you want access, request it here.

Prioritize

You don’t need to build all of these systems out at once. To prioritize what you build first, identify which processes are an overlap of the most important, take the most time and suck the most energy from you.

Building SOPs from your “Personal Core Processes”

Now for each process, build out the SOP(s) you need to actually execute the process. For more complex processes, you may have several SOPs. For others, you may have just one.

Here is the SOP template I use.

A Notes on SOP Maintenance

I often hear the pushback, “wow, maintaining all of these SOPs sounds like a job in itself!” - false. You’ll maintain the SOPs as you use them. Here’s how that looks:

For the SOPs that you’ll manually be doing (either you or someone else), the person in charge of it should always do the process with the SOP open.

• If the process changes, simply update it as you use it. This is one of the massive benefits of documenting your processes. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time you do something, you now have a foundation process (the SOP) that you can tweak and iteratively improve.

• If the process never changes and you end up being able to do the process by heart (your morning and evening routines, for example), then congrats! You’ve formed a habit.

• For the processes that are automated, these SOPs serve as your documentation. They don’t need to change unless your automations change.

3. Execute

The final step is putting your newly designed and documented systems into action. To make executing these systems easy, you need to think through the kinds of leverage you have access to.

For each system you can either:

1. Do it yourself.
   In the scenarios where you need to execute the system yourself, your documentation IS your leverage.
   
   For example, until my “evening routine” and “morning routine” are habits, I would literally pull out my phone and following the SOPs.
   
   It’s like having directions for your life. You still have to do the work, but it takes you FAR LESS energy since you’re just reading the steps instead of recalling “what’s best?” each time. This ensure that you do it right way every time, consistently.
   
   If the system isn’t working? These are living documents. Simply update the SOP.
   

2. Delegate it someone else.

   Here’s the fun part. Thanks to documented systems, delegating ANY of these processes to someone is super easy. Just give them the SOP(s). These are IDEAL for your Remote Executive Assistant to execute.
   
   Even the manual in-person tasks can probably be done by your Assistant with a little extra planning or extra $. For example, they can’t cook you dinner, but they can meal plan and order groceries. Or better yet, they can secure a meal delivery service for you.
   

3. Automate it.

   If any of the steps in this process are going to be automated with tools like Zapier or Lindy, it’s ideal to have them documented first. Simply link off to your specifics Zap or Lindy for that process to keep your automations organized.

Real-World Examples of Systems in Action

Let's look at a few concrete examples of how this might play out across different areas of your life and business:

Personal Finances

• Audit: You realize you're spending hours each month on budgeting and bill payments, often missing due dates.

• Design/Document: You decide to automate bill payments, use software for budget tracking, and schedule a monthly financial review. You create an SOP for your monthly financial review, including steps for reconciling accounts, reviewing investments, and planning for upcoming expenses.

• Execute: You set up automatic payments and link your accounts to budgeting software. You ask your Executive Assistant to categorize all your personal expenses and generate a weekly report on your progress.

Health and Wellness

• Audit: You notice your exercise routine is inconsistent and your diet is haphazard.

• Design/Document: You plan a morning routine that includes exercise, design a meal prep system, and decide to use a tracking app.

• Execute: You start following your new morning routine, spend Sundays meal prepping, and check in with your habit tracker daily. You hire a coach (or use your Executive Assistant) to hold you accountable.

Email Management

• Audit: You're spending hours each day buried in your inbox, often missing important messages.

• Design/Document: You decide to implement inbox zero methodology, use filters and labels, and limit email checking to specific times. You create an SOP for processing your inbox, including steps for triaging messages and using template responses.

• Execute: You delegate this process to your Executive Assistant.

Business Growth

• Audit: Your sales process is inconsistent and you're not following up effectively with leads.

• Design/Document: You map out an ideal sales funnel, plan automated follow-up sequences, and design a system for regular pipeline reviews.You create detailed SOPs for each stage of the sales process, write scripts for follow-up emails, and design a template for pipeline review meetings.

• Execute: You train your Executive Assistant on the new process, set up automated email sequences, and schedule weekly pipeline reviews.

The Freedom Factor: Why It's All Worth It

You might be thinking, "This sounds like a lot of work." And you're right - initially, it is. But the payoff is enormous. The end goal of becoming a Systems Driven Founder isn't to micromanage every second of your day. It's about creating a life and business that run smoothly in the background, allowing you to:

• Focus on High-Value Work: With routine tasks systematized, you can dedicate your time and energy to the big-picture thinking and creative problem-solving that truly moves the needle.

• Be Fully Present: When you're not constantly putting out fires or juggling a million mental to-do lists, you can be truly present with your family, friends, and team.

• Pursue Personal Growth: With more mental bandwidth and free time, you can invest in learning new skills, exploring new ideas, and personal development.

• Scale Your Impact: Effective systems allow you to scale your business without scaling stress. You can grow your impact without sacrificing your sanity.

• Enjoy Peace of Mind: Knowing that all aspects of your life and business are being handled systematically brings a level of calm and confidence that's hard to overstate.

• Increase Profitability: Efficient systems often lead to reduced costs and increased productivity, directly impacting your bottom line.

Your Next Steps: Becoming a Systems Driven Founder

Ready to embark on this journey? Here's how to get started:

1. Start Small: Choose one area of your life or business that's causing you stress. Run it through the ADE process and see how it transforms your day-to-day experience.

2. Use Tools: Leverage technology to support your systems. Tools like Notion, Zapier, and Lindy can be game-changers.

3. Build the Habit: Set a recurring time each week to review and refine your systems. Continuous improvement is key.

4. Share the Vision: If you have a team, bring them into this mindset. Bring your family onboard! The more everyone embraces systems thinking, the more powerful the results.

5. Be Patient: Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. You're building a foundation for long-term success and freedom.

Want to deep dive on this? We’re building an entire FREE course called, “Building Your Personal Operating System” complete with Notion templates for all of this. It’s coming out November 18. If you want access, request it here.

And if you're thinking, "This sounds great, but I need hands-on help implementing it," that's exactly what we do at FreedUp. We work with founders to audit their current operations, design custom systems, and implement tools and processes that create true freedom by handing it all off to an Executive Assistant.

If you're ready to transform your approach to business and life, book a call with me.

Remember, the goal isn't perfection - it's progress. Every step you take towards becoming more systems-driven is a step towards greater freedom, impact, and fulfillment.

Until next week,

Aaron

P.S. I'd love to hear from you! What's one area of your life or business that you'd most like to systematize? What's holding you back? Reply and let me know - your insights could help shape future newsletters and resources. Plus, I'll be featuring some of the most interesting responses in next week's edition, so don't be shy!

P.P.S. If you found this newsletter valuable, please consider sharing it with a fellow founder who might benefit.